I Need to See Your Face
by hallythelantern
Summary: Marinette's career in fashion is skyrocketing, but her husband, Adrien, can't help but wish it wasn't.


_**A/N: This one-shot was inspired by tiger7210's fic, "Engaged".**_

 _ **It is from Adrien's POV.**_

* * *

I wake up cold on the left side of the bed.

What little heat I possessed from yesterday saps away from me, the side of the bed that is now empty. The empty side - the right side - calls out to me, devouring and hungry and empty. It is a black hole that keeps gnawing and eating away at the carefully guarded warmth in my heart, ever so hungry yet never caring. The sheets are untidy and wrinkled and frantic, just like the person who possessed this side of the bed yesterday.

I try to smile; I really do. I try to imagine Marinette scrambling for her purse and office attire, her rummaging and ransacking the drawers in the process. And as I turn my head towards the right side of the room, I see the mess that she has created on the floor, clothes and scarves lying everywhere, that proves my predictions as true. That image should bring up all the fond memories of the times she was late for school, those times her cheeks were furiously red and breaths haggard from all the running she must have done to get there on time (for her), and make me smile.

But I don't.

Instead I only focus on how cold my side of the bed is and what remaining warmth from her side of the bed evaporates in front of me while I'm unable to stop it. How the bed's too big for only plain old me, but also seemingly unable to house two people at the same time.

It hadn't always been like this.

Marinette and I had been close as close could be.

How could we not be? We were Ladybug and Chat Noir, partners in every sense of the word. We were - are - yang and yin, light and darkness, two halves of the same whole. Inseparable. We've been together since we have revealed our identities to each other, when we started our first year in high school. We've had each other's back for everything, from superheroing to me supporting her fashion career and startup company while she supported me when stood up to my father and refused to model any longer. She treats my personal victories as hers, and I do the same for hers.

But… I can't help but feel this gnawing pain in my heart.

And the devil on my shoulders saying that I don't want her to be successful. Not anymore.

I immediately push that thought down.

I should be happy, I know. Coccinelle has become the most successful newcomer in the fashion industry and it's taken Paris up by a storm. It's even becoming the latest thing in Asia and the Americas, and I can't help it but be proud of her when tourists and locals alike wear my wife's design. I'm extremely happy for her that her company is expanding overseas, to the Americas and Asias, and we fantasize over a future where Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Coccinelle can become household names like Gabriel Agreste and Gabriel .

I love seeing how her face lights up when someone on the street asks for her signature.

Her signature, with its curly M and hearted i, hasn't changed at all; she hasn't changed at all. I haven't changed at all.

But somehow, I can't help but feel that we're growing farther apart.

She's always up before I ever am, running frantically and muttering with a panicked tone in her voice about how she's late to work. And when I rub my eyes and sit up on the bed, trying to placate her by saying that she's the boss and doesn't need to be on time, please come back to bed, Mari,she always shakes her head no and says that duty calls.

I let out a wry chuckle at that.

She's always been about duty, both as Marinette and as Ladybug. She's the responsible one of the two of us, always the one who is more serious and willing to take charge. It's not like I don't like taking charge or that I'm not good at taking charge; I actually consider myself to be a decent leader. But of the two of us, she's definitely the one who prefers doing it and ends up doing it more. She takes on others' burdens so willingly and so well, wanting to relieve others of their stress, that others feel completely at ease with her and entrust her with their most vulnerable self and their very own lives.

It's one of the things that I love about her.

It's the very thing that drew me to her in the first place.

But I can't help but want to be a little bit more selfish. To demand more of her care and radiant warmth, a little bit more of her time than the time that she provides to others.

Is it wrong of me to do so, to want to be above them? Maybe it is. Maybe I shouldn't be feeling like this because I already have her. Maybe I shouldn't be feeling like this when she obviously has things that she wants to do with her life, and who am I to get in her way?

Please look at me, Marinette. I need to be with you.

On some days, I become so infested with that selfish want that my fingers hover over her alarm clock's on/off button. I wonder if she would clear her schedule for me if her alarm doesn't ring, if her routine is broken. I fantasize about a whole day I could have her to myself and we could just cuddle up with blankets around us, watching the latest Miyazaki movie with hands intertwined and my cheeks on her crown. If we could have pancakes as breakfast together - my treat - and then talk about everything but also nothing at the same time as I fire away my puns that she would roll her eyes at and retaliate to with her witty comebacks.

But then I stop, because what if she finds out that I was the one who turned off her alarm? Would she be mad at me? Would she hate me? Would she not want to talk to me because I lied to her, maybe even file a divorce ?

I know that what I want to do is wrong. I shouldn't want it; I want to be a good person, after all. But what really stops me from carrying it out is the fear of her reaction.

And that is what disgusts me.

Because I've always considered myself a good person. I help fallen people from the streets, I donate to charity, I used to save people's lives on a daily basis. But maybe that heroism is no longer present and I've just became an empty shell of who I once was. An empty shell that is begging to be filled, that had been empty even before all of this started but now is just too depleted and emaciated to the point of desperation that the prospect of that not being filled is terrifying .

I need to be filled , my heart orders me, and if I'm not, you die .

Not physically, of course, but I doubt there's anything worse.

In my moments of weakness, like today, I wish that I did succeed turning off her alarm clock. I beat myself in the head over it, because, after all, if I take action, if I forgo my morals for one second - just one second - would it be that bad? Maybe Marinette won't be mad at me, maybe she'll nod understandingly and pamper me like the spoiled boy I know I am. Maybe she'll laugh at my antics and nod that she has wanted to spend time with me too, but because of work she's just been caught up. And now that her schedule is no longer on schedule, she would say with that smile that warms my entire being, guess there is no other option than to spend it with me.

But the other option, the one where Marinette yells at me that I lied to her and that I'm being irrational, that she doesn't want to be with me any longer because I'm too needy, impales me more powerfully than the void can.

And so I let the void slowly kill me from the inside.

* * *

I can't get rid of that image of her. She's facing forward while I'm behind her, her back visible but not her face.

I've seen this way too many times in real life. Everytime that she has to wake up early for work, every time that she gets home late and can only get out of her office clothes to crash into the bed. She's always in that position, her bun tied high up and professional like it always is, as her hands move towards the pins on her hair to untie it.

But in my mind, she never does.

Sometimes, I wonder if I can still even remember her face. Whether or not I can picture those vibrant bluebell eyes of hers, twinkling with life and warmth and care and everything that I lacked in my life after my mother disappeared and before I met her. As I imagine it the more, they get dimmer and dimmer and the colors become greyer and greyer. Her skin is no longer glowing, but of now a sickly color, an impersonal and dim tone. The vibrant - sometimes blindingly - colors that used to flood my thoughts whenever I think of her are now tainted with a monochromatic filter, something that makes the whole memory become even more dull and dreadful than it actually is.

And this suffocates me more than the void in my heart, and I know I'm losing her.

Because she's always looking forward, always looking ahead.

And so she never looks back, never looks at me .

And I'm the one who's stuck in place, only able to look at her back as she sees the world.

Maybe that's the problem. None of us has changed; we've stayed the same.

We've stagnated .

The thought stabs a rampant fear in my heart that I kick my sheets out, not caring where it goes as I kneel on the ground. I desperately clutch her hand as if it's my lifeline (and it is), trembling.

"Please, Marinette," I croak. "Please come back to bed."

She only shakes her head with that warm and understanding smile that used to be my world. Now, it only shatters my heart. "I can't, Adrien. I have to go to work ."

I still can't see her face. But now, I can't help but replace my father's face with hers.

And this eats me up more than any loneliness ever could.

I scream and cry myself to bed, willing all of this to just be a nightmare that I'll wake up from one day.

* * *

Maybe I was a fool, thinking that fashion could be my friend. That it could be something that I can enjoy. I thought this ever since Marinette came into my life.

But, no.

This is worse.

Because Marinette imbued warmth into fashion for me. Instead of it being monotonous as it used to be, fashion now became personal. Instead of it being cold and calculating, fashion now became warm and welcoming. Instead of becoming a way to show off status in an unfeeling world where reputation is the only thing that mattered, clothes now became a tool to express my personality in a world that embraced who I was.

But now, not only is it ripping everything back to the way it had been, it's also taking away the only source of warmth I have left.

It took away my father. Now it wants to take away my wife.

I chuckle. I should have seen it coming.

But I didn't.

And I can't help but feel powerless. I don't know what to do that would prevent it from taking Marinette away from me; I don't know if there is something that I could do. I don't know what I could do for her to stop looking forward and back at me.

* * *

I hate fashion.

Fashion took away my father.

Fashion took away my wife.

And now it wants to devour my soul.

And I don't know if I can stop it.

* * *

 _ **Author's Note: I've never written in 1st person before and so this is very new for me! I would love your feedback on how well I did.**_

 _ **Thank you so much for reading!**_

 _ **My tumblr is hallythelantern. I also (sometimes, but MLB makes it hard) write my theories on there as well as store my works there.**_

 _ **If you have any questions or anything you want to tell me, you can contact me via tumblr or AO3 :D.**_


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